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Thursday, July 4, 2013

Our predictions for the German Grand Prix

After a two year hiatus, Formula 1 returns to The Nurburgring. This purpose built circuit was constructed at the edge of the holy grail of motorsport that was the original 22.8 km long Nurburgring Nordschleife. The original circuit, which was nicknamed the Green Hell by Sir Jackie Stewart, was taken off the calendar after Niki Lauda's fiery crash in 1976.Pirelli bring their Soft and Medium compound tyres for this race, which are the same compounds that they brought in 2011. However with the compounds having gotten a lot softer since then, the pace over a single lap should be better at the cost of durability.The Nurburgring hosts corners of varied speeds and the asphalt is not as abrasive and grippy as some other circuits. This requires the cars to have good mechanical grip, which should bode well for the Lotus' and Ferrari's around Germany. But with the arrival of the kevlar belted tyres the Mercedes' and Red Bull's should have no problem with their tyre wear, which they had sorted out anyway.With the Lotus and Ferrari having lost some momentum in the development race they will be hoping to claw back some of the time lost over their rivals. But given that this race is just off the back of the British GP with not much time to spend at the factory and figure out what went wrong, we can expect the Red Bull and the Mercedes to be at the sharp end of the field.Force India and Lotus should still be better on their tyres than the competition, so they will be trying to make a two stop strategy work for them in an attempt to finish higher up than their qualifying positions. Expect the most of the field to do a three stop race.Our predictions for 2013 Formula 1 German Grand Prix Qualifying* - 1. Ham 2. Vet 3. Ros